Mind and Mindfulness

“Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.” -- Jon Kabat Zinn

Most of our sufferings lie in the past or the future. Do you agree?

A man who has lost his job gets more upset thinking what he would do next, a person who has undergone a separation from his/her partner gets sad thinking about the good old memories. Most of it is either in the past regrets or in the future anticipations, that causes the present to suffer.

The Psychology of Mindfulness, or Mindfulness in itself, is the mental phenomena of bringing one’s consciousness to focus on the “present”, on what is happening “now”, on what we are experiencing “at this moment.” Mindfulness works well because it helps us in making aware of our …show more content…
The word “Mindfulness” is a translation of the term “Sati” in Pali, which is a critical part of the Buddhist tradition. Originally, mindfulness was practiced in Yogic meditations, but with the advancement in the field in the past decades, mindfulness has slowly become the answer to a lot of our problems, if not all. There is no area of mental distress that cannot be resolved with mindfulness today. It has been in use since the mid 19th century, however, the work initiated by Jon Kabat Zinn proved to be phenomenal in making mindfulness popular as it is today. Since the mid 70s, many psychologists have been using mindfulness in treating mental conditions like depression, anxiety, stress, PTSD, and so on. Contemporary studies have traced out how mindfulness can be equally effective in dealing with the new disorders which were not there before. It is a wonder how mindfulness, being one of the oldest psychological healing techniques, is equally effective for the modern generation problems as …show more content…
It may be a comfortable sitting or standing posture, or even lying when you are ill. Choose your own posture depending on your health condition, and make sure you are relaxed when you practice mindfulness.

For the sitting posture, sit on a stable chair, not too hard. Put your legs and ankle to rest on the floor, and let your shoulders come to a relaxed position. Put your hands on your knees.

For the standing posture, make sure you stand straight with your spine upright. You can choose to stand against a wall, but do not lean on it, and stand with your feet apart.

For the lying posture, lie down straight with hands resting by your side and chin facing towards the ceiling. Make sure your back is straight, you can use a cushion if you want to.

Place - For practicing mindfulness, you can choose any place with less distractions around. It can be a room in your house, a meditation room, a monastery, any place where you can focus. Having electronic gadgets like cell phones, laptops, or televisions around the mindfulness zone is not a good idea. Also, try to avoid places full of people and noise, let silence induce calmness